


Just One Kiss

by SAYS



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 10:24:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15861744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SAYS/pseuds/SAYS
Summary: For Angie -  Forced to get to know him better, Lily Evans realizes she may have been a little prejudiced against James Potter…





	Just One Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> For Angie - I’m so happy I had to write for you, Angie! I’m also happy I had to write about Lily and the Marauders again. Thanks a lot for the great prompts! I chose fluff and romance rather than drama… I hope you won’t mind.

“That gargoyle-faced daughter of a mountain troll!” Lily Evans muttered fiercely… and sighed, thinking that neither gargoyle nor troll deserved the insult. Then she gritted her teeth when she remembered Severus’ sneering presence.

  
The scene played again and again in her mind as she made her way back to Gryffindor Tower.

“A bet is a bet, Gryffindor Princess,” Donna Goyle said in a haughty tone, the nickname an insult in her mouth. “You lost, so you’ll do whatever I’ll tell you to do.”

  
The Slytherin was obviously enjoying every second of the situation - it wasn’t every day that she had Lily Evans, one of the most gifted witches of her generation, at her mercy. Donna had come with her friends, Peggy and Mandy, and to Lily’s deepest chagrin, Severus Snape was there too.

  
Lily and Severus had been friends - in another lifetime, or so it seemed now. Back then, he would never have let anyone hurt her… but it was the old Severus, this one she didn’t know anymore.

  
Still, it broke her heart.

  
But she shouldn’t have been surprised to see him there since Donna Goyle had always shown a real interest in Severus - something her big brother disapproved - and she probably wanted to humiliate Lily in front of him.

  
Lily’s anger burned up again - she was still unsure how it had all happened. She wasn’t supposed to lose that bet. The Slytherin Quidditch team had been so bad since the beginning of the year it would have been a miracle if they scored a single goal against Hufflepuff and their new sexy goalkeeper, Grant Dale. Lily had said so to Alice and Siobhan as they were exiting the Great Hall, with an emphasis on the word sexy, because they were walking past Potter and his friends.

But she must have been overheard by Gargoyle Girl, because the Slytherin had cornered Lily on her way to Transfiguration the next day. When she had started taunting Lily, who was already running late because of that idiot Potter, she had swallowed the bait.

  
Alice had been comforting - the issue of the game was a sure thing, everyone knew it - and Siobhan had concurred with her. So though she was feeling bad at the idea that she had lowered herself to the Slytherin’s standards, Lily hadn’t been worried. And then, the night before the game, Dale had gotten so sick he was still in Madam Pomfrey’s care when his teammates had entered the Quidditch pitch in the morning. His replacement had been… er… well, let’s just say that Lily had known from the start that she was doomed.

  
Lily groaned inwardly. She should have known Slytherins wouldn’t play fair! They had to be responsible for Dale’s sudden sickness.

  
“Yeah, but you cheated, Goyle!” Lily shot back, even though she knew, deep down, that they would never admit to it and it made her sound pathetic.

  
“Ouch, that hurts!” Donna drawled, pressing a hand to her heart, and then she laughed in an unpleasant way and turned to her clique. “So, what will we have her do?”

  
“She could do our homework for a month,” Peggy suggested. She was an ethereal blonde but Lily knew there was nothing fragile about her.

  
“Or she could buy a little of everything in Honey Dukes for us,” Mandy added.

  
Lily turned away from the brown-haired with green highlights Slytherin. She could tell that though Donna pretended to consider the suggestions of her friends, she already had an idea of her own, and the said idea was probably a lot more humiliating.

  
Cold sweat ran down Lily’s spine.

  
She looked at Severus, but he had averted his eyes. When a lump formed in her throat, she swallowed it, hard, feeling utterly alone. She missed Siobhan and Alice, who had had to go to their Muggle Studies class.

  
“I know!” Donna exclaimed, as if she’d had a sudden idea, with a wicked smile.

“The Mudblood must kiss… James Potter!”

  
Lily’s eyes went wide with surprise and she had to bite her tongue lest it would betray her. She wasn’t going to start begging. She would never, ever, let the Gargoyle know that she couldn’t have demanded anything worse. Steeling herself, she retorted, “Well, fine, if that’s all you could come up with, I’ll do it. Gladly.”

  
And Lily turned her back to them and went back to Gryffindor Tower, pleased to have seen Severus’ shocked and dismayed expression before she’d left.

Lily’s anger had turned to panic when she gave the password to the Fat Lady. She went straight to her dormitory to wait for Alice and Siobhan.

“James! James!” Peter Pettigrew came running into the Seventh Year boys’ dormitory; he was breathless.

  
“What’s up, mate?” James asked, lifting his head from a Quidditch magazine, his thoughts still on the tactics he had just read about.

  
“Lily Evans must kiss you!” Peter announced.

  
Sirius Black barked out a laugh. “Because you said so?” He rolled his eyes. James and Lily were meant to be, he had no doubt about it, but James had always done the wrong things as far as Lily was concerned. Though some people thought it pleased Sirius, they were wrong. When you have a brother, and you love him, you want him to be happy - and James was a brother to Sirius. Therefore, he wanted him to be happy. And Lily was the right choice - she was smart and brave, and she could stand her ground against James Potter.

  
“No, a Slytherin said so,” Peter shot back. And he told them the whole story. “You see, James, it’s your chance! You can kiss her.”

  
But Sirius didn’t agree with that last statement. “You mean, grab her and kiss her… just like that?”

  
“Well… yeah.” Peter shrugged.

  
Sirius turned to Remus. “He can’t be serious!”

  
Remus, who had just come back from the Shrieking Shack and was still a little pale, concurred, “Sirius’s right, James.”

  
James grimaced. “I know! But what if it’s the only chance I’ll ever have of kissing her?”

  
“If you do it that way, yes, it will be your one and only kiss from Lily Evans!”

  
“Because you have a better idea?” James asked, slightly offended.

  
“Hell, yeah!” Sirius retorted. “You love her, don’t you?”

  
“Yes, of course!”

  
“Then show her some respect, if she’s the one for you!” Sirius rolled his eyes again.

  
“Don’t let her kiss you because she must do it, but because she wants to,” Remus added, and Sirius nodded.

  
“Like it’ll ever happen!” James groaned.

  
Sirius sighed. Unrequited love could really turn a smart boy into some dense and pathetic creature. “Let’s have a deal - ignore Lily until the Christmas holiday, don’t talk to her except to say “hello”, don’t strut in front of her or… well, don’t do any of the things you’ve been doing so far. If by then she doesn’t want to kiss you, then you can grab her and kiss her on the spot.”

  
“But…”

  
“Two months, Padfoot.”

  
“Alright,” James sighed, knowing how hard it would be.

Lily had told every detail of the meeting with the Slytherins to Alice and Siobhan, who had been shocked and outraged at first, then sympathetic. She still couldn’t believe she had let a stupid Slytherin trick her into making a bet. She was angry at Donna, but also at Severus, and above all at herself. But she was a Gryffindor, so however unfair it might be, she would be true to her word.

  
She would kiss James Potter.

  
The girls had talked about the “how” for hours - how do you kiss a boy who’s dreamed of kissing you for years? They had imagined the most extravagant scenarios… and ended up with one very simple idea: Lily would wait until James would try again to catch her attention in some irksome way - he did it about twice a week, after all, so she wouldn’t have to wait for long - and she would play along and kiss him.

  
Of course, he might just think she had fallen for him at last… but she didn’t want to think of the consequences just yet. Just the thought of kissing him was already bad enough.

  
But during the next two weeks, to Lily and her friends’ surprise, James didn’t pay much attention to her, barely saying “hello!” when they happened to walk past each other.

  
As Lily was getting more and more desperate, Alice wondered aloud whether James was in cahoots with the Slytherins. Though Siobhan agreed there was definitely something fishy, she had a hard time believing he or his friends would ever get involved in anything with Severus Snape, and Alice grudgingly admitted she had a point.

  
Another week went by. Lily decided she would follow James around and find out why he was ignoring her all of a sudden. When Alice and Siobhan tried to stop her, she refused to listen to them.

  
“They will catch you at it and how will you explain…?” Alice began to say.

  
“They won’t,” Lily interrupted her, “because you’ll both help me.” When they groaned, she added, “You know I can’t do it without you, don’t you?”

  
So Lily started covertly watching James Potter, which was new to her who had always done her best to pretend he didn’t exist. When they were in the Gryffindor Common Room, she forced her friends to sit close to the four who called themselves the Marauders, and night after night, intently listening to their conversations, she was shocked to realize that she had been wrong in most of her assumptions.

  
Lily had always wondered why Peter Pettigrew was friends with James and Sirius - Remus, yes, but why the other two, really? They often whispered to him, and every time he looked so dejected she had believed him the victim of some moral harassment. But now that she was paying attention to their interactions, she could tell they treated Peter the same as any other of them, and he teased them as much as they teased him, even though she could tell he didn’t like it when they did. He didn’t seem to be able to take their banter as lightly as the others did. At first, she was inclined to blame James, Sirius and Remus because they didn’t pay any attention to Peter’s feelings, but then she wondered why he was so unnecessarily touchy when he obviously loved to laugh at his friends. They were always there for him, after all - no one was allowed to make fun of Peter.

  
She shouldn’t have been so surprised that James could be a good friend… and yet she was. But of course, like any other human being, he couldn’t be all bad, could he? How had she become so prejudiced against James Potter? She didn’t much like that better-than-thou girl she turned into every time James and his friends were around and promised herself that she would be more open-minded from now on.

  
One afternoon, as she pretended to read in a corner of the Common Room, Lily was rather surprised to see James help a Fourth Year do his homework. The scene was so surreal to her she believed at first that she had dreamed it. But it happened again a few days later, and she realized that he wasn’t showing off to the younger Gryffindor but did his best to discretely help him find the right answers. Of course, she had always known that James was smart but it would never have occurred to her that he could devote some of his oh-so-precious time to helping his housemates.

  
Then she made a face at her use of “oh-so-precious” and admonished herself - You’re doing it again, girl! She glanced at him above her book; he was running his fingers through his thick dark hair and making a mess of it. Her own fingers itched to… Lily flushed. Enough was enough! This was driving her nuts. She fled to the safe and quiet haven that was the library.

  
But when three nights later she overheard the Marauders plan a visit to the kitchen, she decided she would follow them - with or without Alice’s and Siobhan’s help. They hid in the Common Room after everyone had supposedly gone to bed and waited for James and his friends to come back. Later on, as they were walking through the dark halls, Lily regretted more than once to have talked her friends into coming with her - they were so noisy! Or maybe it was her heart thudding in her chest. As much as she disapproved of the Marauders’ mischievous ways, she had to admit that she enjoyed the thrill of roaming the castle at night.

  
When Lily and her friends reached the kitchen, they were welcomed by the house elves who ushered them to one of the tables. Three pairs of human eyes looked up at them, surprised. But where was James? Lily looked around and saw him deep in conversation with one of the small castle servants and the compassion she could see in his hazel eyes left her breathless.

  
About a week after their visit to the kitchen, Alice and Siobhan exchanged a look while Lily was telling them about something James had done earlier in the day. They would be going back home the next day, for Christmas.

  
“Look, Lily,” Alice started, when she was finally done, “it’s been almost two months now and there doesn’t seem to be any change in…”

  
“But…” Lily had stopped pacing and her slightly flushed cheeks were paling again.  
“What Alice is trying to say is, you see, it’s obvious you’ve been making progress…”

  
“Of course I have!” Lily retorted indignantly. “I have…”

  
“You’ve been falling for Potter,” Siobhan finished for her.

  
“Oh… no… you don’t understand,” Lily protested, blushing.

  
“Lily,” Alice said calmly. “During the first few weeks, you were always a little annoyed and you only had a few words to say about James, as if they left a bad taste in your mouth and you had to get rid of them as soon as possible.”

  
“And then, little by little, you’ve added more and more details - like how he runs his fingers in his hair or the way his smile always reaches his eyes -, and it became obvious that you’ve been enjoying watching him.”

  
Lily looked into Siobhan’s light eyes and said, shaking her head. “No… no, you don’t get it. I can’t be…” But the more she wanted to deny it, the more she knew her friends were right. She sat on her bed, hard, a stunned expression on her face. “How…?”

  
Lily searched Alice’s face, than Siobhan’s, but there was no answer there.

  
“You’ve been finding out who he really is,” Alice offered, coming to sit at her left.

“It was only a matter of time, really…”  
“You two are made to be, we’ve known that for years,” Siobhan added, sitting on Lily’s right and taking her hand in hers.

  
“Well, maybe not for years…”

  
“’Course we did,” Siobhan stated.

  
“But, he’s…” Lily started, and then she stopped, at a loss for words.

  
“He’s James Potter, you mean?” Alice teased her. “Don’t worry, he’ll still be an arse every now and then to remind you of the good old days.”

  
“Alice!” Siobhan protested.

  
“I’m afraid she’s right…” and Lily laughed, then she sobered. “But he’s not interested anymore, so it doesn’t matter.”

  
Alice rolled her eyes. “Don’t be daft! He can’t have gone from smitten to indifferent in one second.”

In spite of her friends’ reassurance, Lily couldn’t sleep that night, so she took a book to the Common Room and curled up on one of the sofas in front of the fireplace.

  
“Mind if I join you?” a voice she’d come to know very well asked.

  
She jumped and stammered, looking up, “No, not at all.”

  
James took a seat next to her, but not so close as to touch her. “Anywhere I look, you always seem to be there, lately,” he said casually.

  
“W-what? Are you implying I…I’ve been following you around?” Lily stammered, on the defensive. “We’re both Gryffindors, aren’t we?” But when their eyes met, she blushed and deep inside she cursed her fair skin.

  
“Of course,” James nodded, pretending he hadn’t seen her cheeks redden. His heart hammering a little faster in his chest, he changed the subject. “Will you go back home for Christmas, because I’ve always wondered…”

  
And they talked well into the night, about their families, about the future and how the rampant evil that threatened the Wizarding World was affecting them. When James told her very seriously that he would never stop fighting until Voldemort - he wasn’t afraid to say his name - was gone, against all odds, Lily didn’t laugh.

  
As James was describing a typical Christmas at Hogwarts, Lily yawned.

“Sorry.”

  
“Don’t be silly!” James chuckled, before yawning too. “Ok, time to go to bed,” he added with obvious reluctance.

  
“Goodnight,” Lily said, getting up from the sofa. All of a sudden, she was feeling a little self-conscious - she was in her most comfortable robe and pajamas in the middle of the night with the boy she really wanted to impress. Then she changed her mind again and turned around… and almost bumped into him; he caught her before she fell backward.

Their faces were less than two inches apart. On impulse, her breath catching in her throat, Lily pressed her lips to James’, and though she’d caught him by surprise, he kissed her back.

  
Their first kiss was as sweet and full of promises as she had hoped it would be.  
Lily took a step back and James let go of her.

  
“Why now?” he breathed, and when she looked stunned, he added, “I think the whole school knows by now.”

  
“Of course,” Lily sighed, momentarily miffed, then she looked him in the eyes and everything was forgotten. “I wanted our first kiss to belong to just the two of us.”

  
On those words, she fled up the stairs to her dormitory to hide her burning cheeks.

  
And her smile.


End file.
